Interfictions (15 page)

"I thought you wouldn't come.” Gabó straightened up, and held me close.

"I always come when you call for me."

"The other day you did not come."

Inside me there must have been a tiny splinter of ice left, because I felt cold. I did not wake up to Gabó?

"It was winter."

"But there was no ice anymore.” It frightened me; I felt like disintegrating on the beach.

We sat down on our favorite log.

"Talk to me!” I said, and I was tense.

And Gabó spoke. About the split-up family at Christmas, the empty bed, about dark loneliness, about the fact that he had missed me. He was holding my hand all along, and I began to feel like I did in autumn. The long dream split up into pieces.

Gabó told me about books, poems—he once said that he would write one about me, but in the end nothing came of it—about the bird table in the garden at his parents' house.

And then with the same tone of voice as he spoke about the sparrows, he continued, “I've met a girl as well."

I smiled, because it was spring, and because there was nothing else I could do.

"We really understand each other. We have a lot in common. When we laugh, we're the only ones who exist. Can you understand that?"

I looked back at him. He was happy and sad at the same time.

"I am only a lake. But even I understand that."

"It's so good that finally I'm not alone.” In his voice the amazement was still vibrating from the feeling of finding someone.

"I am glad,” I said, and meant it.

Still, there was sadness between us, a peculiar gap that is present mainly when you are with someone that you really miss. I am a lake, and he is a human being. It is that simple.

When I saw him next, he was not alone. A slim, dark-haired girl was with him on the beach. Gabó's hand woke me up from the dream, but I did not get up; I stayed silently on the bed of rocks.

"Is the water cold?” the girl asked. She had a nice voice.

"Not that much,” Gabó replied, and whispered down at me. “Are you there?"

I only shaped my face for him.

"Yes, I am here. I can see you.” I looked over his shoulders. “I can see her."

"Don't you want to come out?"

I looked deep into his eyes.

"You are not really eager to see me out there."

He made such a torn face that I felt sorry for him.

"Listen! I am your lake. Always.... But now, return to her...” I reflected over it, and watched the waves as they reached the shore. “After that, come back on the beach and kiss her!"

"What?"

"What are you muttering?” the girl asked giggling, and stepped closer.

"Kiss her!” I said determined, and disappeared.

Gabó straightened up. It was not even his choice, it was the girl who embraced him first. I was watching them from the bed, and made the lights glitter at them. They were pretty together.

Gabó emerged from the embrace a little tensely, and then with a glance at me, he started to pull the girl away into the forest.
I will be back
, his eyes promised.

"Be good,” I splashed after him quietly. I am not sure he heard it.

I waited until they left, and then I floated away relaxed and licked the shore where they had just stood.

I know that Gabó will return one day with or without the girl, and that he will put his hand in the water to wake me up. I think that I will sleep. Not out of spite or anger. The fact is that the pain is not strong enough any more to rouse me.

But I will make an effort. I would like to be conscious for as long as possible, watch the mountains, the lingering clouds. It would be good to hear the owls, however lonely the forest is.

And I would very much like it if they came to visit again. Now I know far too much to just sink back into the dream. I would like it if Gabó would look into me again, just as when he threw himself in me, and see himself and the girl on the beach.

I will be around much longer than the girl, or Gabó, or even the trees.

Lakes do not know about death, pain, or love. But inside me, a couple of tear drops and the taste of raspberry are circulating. That much I can feel. That much I know.

Translated from the Hungarian by Noémi Szelényi

Being between always came naturally to me. My mother brought Vietnamese stories, cuisine, and traditions with her, and I grew up listening to Hungarian songs and radio plays, reading European and Asian classics and Soviet science fiction with the same enthusiasm. Opening doors and peeking into other cultures, sciences, and arts is easy once you recognize the nature of your hunger. I opened as many doors in my short life as possible, and it took me some time to realize that I had wandered through the door of writing and made my home there.

I believe one of the curses of being a writer is that while you are, feel, and live, one part of you is always taking notes and making an inventory of everything: jokes, gestures, and the most intimate griefs alike. This part of you doesn't judge only by utility. It cannot be switched off. If you could switch it off, you couldn't be a writer. Once in a while a story is as much somebody else's as it is yours, and you must be careful, for you are opening a window on someone else's secrets. This is one of those stories.

Csilla Kleinheincz

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Undoubtedly you have heard of Fecondita. It is the place to which Shakespeare refers when he speaks of the providence in a swallow's fall. Aquinas had only just seen it when he claimed God resides whole in all things and in each one.

Fecondita is a village in one of the valleys southwest of Torino, where God is actually present in every rock and tree, every beast, every dying swallow, every tawny, downy hair on the backs of your arms, every pore of the skin in the hollow of your collarbone. No, don't try to find it. Like the world into which we all have fallen—some hard enough to break bone—it is a place not found, but given. Be content that it exists, and no one else will find it either.

Fecondita has seen better days.

In Fecondita, swallows nest in the bathroom sinks of dead widows who forgot to close the windows before they drowned themselves from grief. In the bathtubs, munny grapes grow from the mould. A dozen widows who couldn't find the faith to die seclude themselves in a convent behind a hill, whispering rosaries with dry throats and refusing water. The forests resound with the off-key arias of a mad, drunken Sorcerer who never drinks and is not mad. All the fields but one lie fallow, filling up with whisperweed and bramble.

And in that one still-tended field, the last two sane men in the village, Nico the simpleton and Giulio the cripple, dig their shoulders into the yoke and sweat right along with the cow, poor Grazia. With their help, the old beast plods across the dense earth, though her milky eyes bug out of her head, and beads of sweat like salty berries ripen on their brows. With all three of them heaving, the plow moves but slowly. It moves, until the cow keels over, dead.

"It's a sign from God!” cries Nico.

"A sign from God for what?” asks Giulio. “That you and I should quit being plowmen? I could have told you that without a sign. Help me up!"

"I didn't mean that,” says Nico, pulling his brother out of the dirt. In the dent left by Giulio's body, dandelions are sprouting, though they plowed that furrow only a moment ago.

"What then?” asks Giulio, prodding the dead cow's flesh with the flat of his misshapen foot. “You think God wants us to play the martyr? To pick up the yoke and plow by ourselves? I should never have read you the
Lives of the Saints
. Get me my crutch!"

"That's not it either,” says Nico, prying the wooden crutch from beneath Grazia's carcass, propping it under Giulio's arm.

"Then for God's sake, what?” shouts Giulio, raising a fist. “You think He is punishing us for not going off to war and dying noble, stupid deaths like all the others? You think this accursed field with its endless weeds and that forest full of deer that eat whatever we grow are not atonement enough?"

Nico cringes, covering his head, though Giulio doesn't really strike. “I think it is a sign from God that we should take a rest."

"Oh,” says Giulio.

They sit on a toppled standing stone, one that has lain at the corner of the oxcart lane and the Roman Road to Torino ever since God first came to Fecondita. Each brother leans against the other. We float between them, on the back of a dandelion seed caught in an eddy of wind. God floats there too.

Over Nico's head, the campanile of the Convent of Our Lady Montimbanca rises above the hill. It strikes one o'clock, but they pulled the bell down years ago to melt it into bullets. So the only effect is a ripple in the air like that made by a drop in a puddle.

Through the crook of Giulio's crutch, the forest edge wriggles its hundred healthy limbs. It isn't taunting him, no. In fact, it is waving at us. But try telling Giulio that.

At last the berries of sweat stop rolling down their chests, and their breaths stop sounding quite so ragged.

"What the hell do we do, Nico?” Giulio asks. “We haven't got money for a new cow. If we did, we'd have to leave the village to buy one. And then we'd be killed in the war like everyone else. God has it out for us, Nico. Poor Grazia. You and I can't even lift her out of the way."

"Does God really hate us, Giulio?"

"No,” sighs Giulio. He pokes at his misshapen foot with the end of his crutch. “He did make you a fool, and me a cripple, so we couldn't join the army. He did save our lives. Though I don't know why."

"Then maybe He'll help us! You could go to the convent, and ask the nuns to pray God to send us a new cow!"

Giulio laughs. “I'm not going to ask the nuns anything, Nico. I already know what they'll say."

"What will they say, brother? Tell me."

"First, Mother Concetta will bring out her ruler. She'll say, ‘Stupid boy, we taught you better,' and slap my wrist so hard it leaves a welt. Then Sister Traviata will kiss it. And lastly Sister Annunziata will remind me God's love doesn't work that way: if it did, their husbands would still be alive."

"But won't they pray for us, Giulio? Won't they pray for us just the same?"

"I suppose. We're still alive, after all. Their husbands have been dead for years. Who else have they to pray for?"

"Then it just might help! Like Mama says, you never know."

"I tell you what, brother. It isn't as though we've anything better to do. Why don't
you
go ask the nuns to pray for a new cow, and
I'll
go find the mad Sorcerer Sancto who lives in the forest, and get him to raise up Grazia from the dead. We'll see who helps us first: God or the Devil. Assuming we don't die of hunger before they do."

"The Sorcerer Sancto!” gasps Nico. “Not him! He nurses rat babies from his own demon teat, after our mama poisons their mama. That is why Mama can never get rid of the rats in our cellar. Or that is what she says, at least."

"Mama also says that God helps those who help themselves. And if that were the case, then why should poor Grazia keel over and die? But Mama has never met the Sorcerer. And neither have we. Which means he'll at least have something different to say. Even if he wants me to hit myself in the nose with a shovel and draw unholy runes in the blood, at least it will be something new."

Nico scratches his head. “You are wiser than I, older brother. You're probably right. But I think we had better ask Mama."

"You go,” Giulio mutters.

God's dandelion seed floats on its way, and we with it, across the half-plowed field. Nico follows, hurrying up the oxcart path. Two swallows wing out of the woods, the same woods where the Sorcerer Sancto hides, each carrying a wild apple twice its size. The two birds disappear through the broken window of an empty farmhouse choked with munny vines and whisperweed, then emerge and flit back to the woods.

Apples often ripen out of season in Fecondita. The trick lies in finding the tree.

In the entryway to Signora Parrucca's kitchen, the smells of talc and perfumed hair pomade collide with the pungences of parmigiano and sweet peppers hung to dry. Pictures of her sons in mismatched frames line the rose-tiled walls. On our right against the ceiling smiles Tenente Colonello Ferdinando Marco Moresca Parrucca: blue-eyed, white-haired, and proud in his uniform. On our left, down by the floor, Nico and Giulio cringe from the flash. In between, were it God's will, we might count twenty-seven other pictures—but here comes Nico.

"Mama!” he calls, coming in the open door. “May I please have a bottle of beer, Mama? It's hot today!"

"Nicollino, trombini! Of course, if you ask so nice!” Signora Parrucca's voice floats up on a cool draft through the cellar door. She follows, wearing a yellow dress that makes her resemble a summer squash, and a glossy black wig half as tall as she is.

Nico takes a stool at the kitchen table. “Your favorite wig looks very fine today, Mama."

"Such a good boy.” Signora Parrucca tousles Nico's hair, then brushes it back all out of place. She puts a brown bottle and a glass before him. “There."

"Thank you, Mama."

She sweeps out into the garden. Her voice comes through the window. “Now tell me: what are you doing home so early? We need that field plowed! We can't live on beer and dried peppers all winter, you know."

Nico sips from the bottle. “Mama, I have bad news."

"Drink from the glass, young man!"

Nico winces and tips the bottle to pour.

Signora Parrucca swishes back in with a basket of peppers. “Bad news? Let's have it.” She pats a stray hair back into her wig. She purses her big red lips into wrinkles.

He gulps. “Grazia keeled over and died in the field."

She drops the basket on the table. “WHAT?"

The bottle slips out of Nico's hands as he throws them up to ward off a blow. The glass tips over. Beer spills all over her dress.

"Bischero insensato!” Signora Parrucca cuffs her youngest son across the head. “Out of my sight. Go! Before I get the rolling pin."